[NGTM-1R]

Ok maybe you don't frequent FotG much but we have rules about those types of comments there.  See the 'Model X...' comment.

To be blunt: We aren't in your project forum. We're in Off-Topic Discussion, Fan Fiction and Art. The rules here are the rules of HLP in general. They are not yours to define, alter, or enforce.

Now step back from the conversation.

[brandx0]

Meh, I have no problem with anyone critiquing my proportions on my models.  Feel free to do so, but it'd be nice once in a while for someone to provide some proof rather than the usual "It's wrong, I saw it this one time in some book a few years ago and I'm pretty sure I remember it being different"

Now, play nicely.

[Narvi]

Yes, there's a show called Macross. I've never actually watched the original, just its excellent spinoffs, but it's generally considered a classic. Very fun, none of this BSG grimdark.

Man, what show were you watching? The original Macross/Robotech had Earth get beamspammed by the Grand Fleet, 17 million Zentradi warships doing orbital bombardment. 50% of the water on the planet never to return, human population all but wiped out.

There's a difference between BSG grimdark and darkness in general. Macross has always been a hopeful series with hope in humanity.

Do you remember the ending, where they allied with the Zentraedi using the power of song, reconstructed Earth, built a bunch of Macross colony ships and became a galactic power within less than half a century?

[chief1983]

It's more a Brand-X rule than a FotG rule.  He gets those comments.  A lot.  And they're usually wrong.

[brandx0]

Also let's remember that this is from an anime from the 80s, where proportions depended less on actual design and more on what the animator was feeling like that day, not to mention that it's a transformer whose parts from any mode barely fit into any other without some massive size distortion.

Anyways, I've chosen to go off of those plans I posted, being as they're the most internally consistent blueprints I could find, and seem to be drawn with proper orthographic projection for the most part.  (Which is a welcome change after the images I've had to use for FotG lately...)

[brandx0]

Also, another update:

[TrashMan]

There's a difference between BSG grimdark and darkness in general. Macross has always been a hopeful series with hope in humanity.

Do you remember the ending, where they allied with the Zentraedi using the power of song, reconstructed Earth, built a bunch of Macross colony ships and became a galactic power within less than half a century?

I recall almost all of the cast ending up dead, often in very non-heroic ways.

Roy gets killed by friendly fire whole fending off a fake assault...all that after 3 years of intense combat in space. That other pilots dies surprisinlgy fast too.

Almost the whole Mascorss crew killed (Captain gloval, the bridge bunnies and many others) in a suicide attack, moths after the enemy fleet is actually destroyed.
That's like....Aragorn getting killed by a lone goblin while walking trough the park, after all those epic battles. Total downer.

[TrashMan]

Also let's remember that this is from an anime from the 80s, where proportions depended less on actual design and more on what the animator was feeling like that day, not to mention that it's a transformer whose parts from any mode barely fit into any other without some massive size distortion.

Oh no' I'd say they fit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXNa88lRh4E&feature=related

[brandx0]

That would be the VF-0, Trashman, a different fighter (and coincidentally, by the creator of Macross, Shoji Kawamori's own admission, the first variable fighter where the transformation actually works without any size deforming or magical part swapping)

[TrashMan]

The transformation is the same as the VF-1 tough. Minimal changes.

There are transformable toys of the VF-1 out there.
VF-1 is fully transformable ( judging by the blueprints), only it's not always drawn acccurately in Macross. Dimensions will never be 100% correct when you draw. Especially if you have to draw thousands of images from various angles.

[Narvi]

There's a difference between BSG grimdark and darkness in general. Macross has always been a hopeful series with hope in humanity.

Do you remember the ending, where they allied with the Zentraedi using the power of song, reconstructed Earth, built a bunch of Macross colony ships and became a galactic power within less than half a century?

I recall almost all of the cast ending up dead, often in very non-heroic ways.

Roy gets killed by friendly fire whole fending off a fake assault...all that after 3 years of intense combat in space. That other pilots dies surprisinlgy fast too.

Almost the whole Mascorss crew killed (Captain gloval, the bridge bunnies and many others) in a suicide attack, moths after the enemy fleet is actually destroyed.
That's like....Aragorn getting killed by a lone goblin while walking trough the park, after all those epic battles. Total downer.

Uuuh. Roy died from internal bleeding after fending off an actual Zentraedi assault.

And we don't know what happened to Global and the rest after the First Space War, besides the fact that Global retired.

Hikaru and a few others disappeared with their entire colony fleet. We don't know the specifics there at all, it's supposed to be kept mysterious.

Are you confusing this with Robotech? I don't remember this happening at all.

[brandx0]

Transformation isn't quite the same, for example, see the infamous leg retcon:

Nobody could figure out how the legs went from the body of the fighter to the tip of the nose during transformation, or what they held onto once they got there, hence, roughly a decade after the show came out, Shoji Kawamori came up with this:



Notice also that after transformation, the nose and wings shrink considerably in relation to the body, legs and arms  (For example, look at my top down view on the last page, with the wings swept back, and see how far back they go, and compare to the rear view in this picture)

Also take a look at the thickness of the backpack and arms.  Stack those on top of eachother, as in fighter mode, and their thickness greatly exceeds the width of the leg, yet the arms do not protrude lower than the legs in fighter mode.



Point being that it's anime magic that transforms this fighter, and later valkyries corrected this in their own designs.  Simply take a look at those transformable toys and see how they stack up to these drawings in their proportions.  The Bandai toy is on crack, the Yamato ones get the fighter mode pretty correctly, but battroid is a bit off (not to mention that the 1/72 toy is a partsformer)

[Mongoose]

It occurs to me that, if I were a mod in here, I'd spoiler-mark half of this thread thanks to people who can't keep their traps shut about major plot points.

[NGTM-1R]

Do you remember the ending, where they allied with the Zentraedi using the power of song, reconstructed Earth, built a bunch of Macross colony ships and became a galactic power within less than half a century?

I remember the ending where the Zentradi were more or less annihilated from Earth's population, otherwise mass cloning wouldn't have been needed for those Macross colony ships?

It's more a Brand-X rule than a FotG rule.  He gets those comments.  A lot.  And they're usually wrong.

Your point? Even comparing the plan view and the one he gave, the nose is still too long.

[Narvi]

Do you remember the ending, where they allied with the Zentraedi using the power of song, reconstructed Earth, built a bunch of Macross colony ships and became a galactic power within less than half a century?

I remember the ending where the Zentradi were more or less annihilated from Earth's population, otherwise mass cloning wouldn't have been needed for those Macross colony ships?

Yeah, so what? It's still a hopeful series. Not BSG grimdark at all.

If it was BSG grimdark, all the pilots would have slept around with each other and there would have been loads of angst.

[brandx0]

As for the nose being longer in my version, I'd gladly post an overlay image if I really felt inclined, but knowing I'm right is good enough for now.  Prove me wrong.

[NGTM-1R]

As for the nose being longer in my version, I'd gladly post an overlay image if I really felt inclined, but knowing I'm right is good enough for now.  Prove me wrong.

Fair enough.

Here's your side-by-side comparison. I helpfully cut them both down so I'd have a known reference when scaling. Interestingly, they don't come out the same way; the plan view version is six pixels taller when scaled for length with yours.




You've added intakes or something similar to the front of the small protrusions on the legs that are not there in the fighter-mode plan drawings. They are in the VF-1A B-mode pics, but are not the VT-1D/VF-1J version, and they are smaller because they are shaped differently in the VF-1A as compared to yours.

The nose is definitely the wrong shape.

The nose lasers are overenlongated, stretching further back then they should, and probably not as bulbous as they should be.

You've added a lip to the cockpit, and change in its canting at the rear as well as making it shorter.

The tail extension has developed an interesting bulbous tip that's not present in the plan view.

The midship fins are both the same size when the tailwards one should be smaller, are oversized.

The lower lip of the exhaust port is clearly enlongated past the upper in yours. The plan view shows them to be of equal length (though not equal angle).

Shall I go on?

[chief1983]

What are you *****ing about?  Aside from the lack of the tank, and the little dongle sticking out the back (which probably should be straight back anyway), they overlap just about perfectly.

[attachment deleted by evil Tolwyn]

[NGTM-1R]

What are you *****ing about?  Aside from the lack of the tank, and the little dongle sticking out the back (which probably should be straight back anyway), they overlap just about perfectly.

I still see everything I listed?

In fact, the overlap doesn't actually illustrate some of the "additions" that were made, like the lip on the cockpit or the additional intake.

EDIT: In fact, I even missed the leg fins being placed wrong without the overlap.

[brandx0]

Actually I really appreciate the constructive criticism, finally we're getting somewhere, now if only every critique was done in that fashion we'd be rolling.

So, let's discuss:

Here's your side-by-side comparison. I helpfully cut them both down so I'd have a known reference when scaling. Interestingly, they don't come out the same way; the plan view version is six pixels taller when scaled for length with yours.

Seems pretty much about right.  With big thick outlines like that sometimes it's tough to get an exact scale, so for the most part I aimed for my edges to line up just short of the middle or inside the outline in some cases.  Going by the outer black edge leaves a rather bubbly shape.

You've added intakes or something similar to the front of the small protrusions on the legs that are not there in the fighter-mode plan drawings. They are in the VF-1A B-mode pics, but are not the VT-1D/VF-1J version, and they are smaller because they are shaped differently in the VF-1A as compared to yours.

Conflicting references, I'm also looking at many other images, especially those on the box art of the Hasegawa model kits, which are incredibly well done if you ask me.  I chose to scale them to the size seen in those paintings, where they are quite prominent.  I'm still fiddling with their shape

The nose is definitely the wrong shape.

I disagree, as chief pointed out, it seems to match up quite well except for right at the base where the head will be.  That's simply a matter of sanity, you can have either a flat bottomed nose (which doesn't seem to be the case) or an indentation that rises higher up.  I chose the latter

The nose lasers are overenlongated, stretching further back then they should, and probably not as bulbous as they should be.

Well, first off, they're not lasers, (unless you're talking about a single bad case of commissioned animation by an outside company, which most macross fans choose to ignore)

But anyways, they're placeholders

You've added a lip to the cockpit, and change in its canting at the rear as well as making it shorter.

I've since removed the lip after looking at photos of real aircraft canopies

The tail extension has developed an interesting bulbous tip that's not present in the plan view.

They are indeed there, it's tough to see as the plan view is rather low res.  Their shape is off, but they're merely placeholders for now.

The midship fins are both the same size when the tailwards one should be smaller, are oversized.

That's a matter of conflicting references, while that plan view has one smaller than the other, many other pictures have them equally scaled

The lower lip of the exhaust port is clearly enlongated past the upper in yours. The plan view shows them to be of equal length (though not equal angle).

Artistic and functional choice for when it transforms to Battroid mode, as well as once again a case of conflicting references.  In battroid mode, the forward "toe" protrudes further forward than the rear.  If both were the same length in fighter mode, but with the rear having a sharper angle, it would have to stretch further back than the forward.

Shall I go on?

Absolutely, this is the type of discussion that really should be present in all WIP threads.